When you are running a small business, it can be difficult to prioritize growing your business over the day-to-day core activities. However, failing to schedule a time to devote to improving your business efficiency and growth can mean that you don’t make the best decisions to sustain your business for the long term.
As spring approaches, there is a natural inclination to declutter, renew, and to spring clean, so why not use this as an opportunity to make changes in your business that will help to develop it and further its reach. It’s short term pain for long term gain.
Track and review finances
Financial stability is key to growing your business and failing to control costs can have a significant impact on your ability to achieve your goals. You need to review your business’s finances proactively.
Are your suppliers still giving you a good deal?
Check with suppliers that you are using the most cost-efficient way to access their products. For example, Altium’s PCB design system Circuit Studio is now available as a perpetual license which means that you only pay once for software, but the cost is less than competitors annual cost.
Which are your most profitable products?
You should also review the prices of the products or services that you provide. What may have been profitable a couple of years ago, may not still carry the same weight.
Where can you make savings?
By examining your expenditure, you’ll be able to identify where your business is leaking unnecessary money. Something as simple as capping the amount of money that employees can spend before they need to get the cost authorized can help you control your budget and prevent fanciful purchases.
Review your business plans and goals
As your business has evolved over time, it is likely that the business goals that you set in the beginning have been achieved, or at least partly realized. Now is the time to review your business plans and goals and adjust them accordingly using the date from the financial review. This is perhaps the most important part of spring cleaning your business.
Examining and reviewing business plans enables you to:
- Adjust goals
- Identify new business objectives
- Identify gaps in your current strategies – which were successful, and which were less so.
- Redefine the strategies
- Detect issues in the processes that are currently in place
- Identify gaps in the products or services that you offer
- Plan for future growth
New goals are a great way to motivate and inspire your team to work more efficiently and productively, so ask your employees to make suggestions as to how you can streamline operations and processes. They are working on the coal face and are best placed to make worthwhile recommendations.
It often feels counter-intuitive to make adjustments to what is, on the surface, a well-oiled machine; however, every business can benefit from tighter budget controls and a stringent review of the products and processes that govern it, whether you want to grow the business or not.